Page:Fantastic Universe (1956-10; vol. 8, no. 3).djvu/50

 by Madeleine L'Engle


 * The witch woman was very kind to the little boy—very, very kind

lived in a deserted, boarded-up plantation house, and nobody knew about her but me. Nobody in the nosey little town in south Georgia where I lived when I was a boy knew that if you walked down the dusty main street to where the post office ended it, and then turned left and followed that road a piece until you got to the rusty iron gates of the drive to the plantation house, you could find goings on would make your eyes pop out. It was just luck that I found out. Or maybe it wasn't luck at all. Maybe the witch woman wanted me to find out because of Alexandra. But now I wish I hadn't because the witch woman and Alexandra are gone forever and it's much worse than if I'd sever known them.

Nobody'd lived in the plantation house since the Civil war when Colonel Londermaine was killed and Alexandra Londermaine, his beautiful young wife, hung herself on the chandelier in the ball room. A while before I was born some northerners bought it but after a few years they stopped coming and people said it was because the house was haunted. Every few

''Nobody in the sleepy little town in Southern Georgia knew about the witch woman except the young boy who used to haunt the lonely plantation. Madeleine L'Engle, author of and other distinguished novels, introduces us to a very lonely woman whom time has passed by''

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